It was Ford’s first public appearance since her allegations against Kavanaugh came to light. Throughout the testimony, Ford remained composed, compelling and credible, recounting her version of events: how she was pushed into a bedroom by an inebriated Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge, during a party, and how Kavanaugh had covered her mouth to prevent her from screaming, before she managed to escape.

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When asked how sure she was that Kavanaugh was the culprit, she replied without hesitation: “100 per cent”. In a follow-up question, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein asked her how she could be so sure of it, Ford replied: “The same way that I’m sure that I’m talking to you right now. It’s — just basic memory functions. And also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain that, sort of, as you know, encodes — that neurotransmitter encodes memories into the hippocampus. And so, the trauma-related experience, then, is kind of locked there, whereas other details kind of drift.”

Ford knows what she is talking about. After all, she has a PhD in counselling psychology from the University of Southern California and currently works as a research psychologist at Stanford University. She’s an expert on the science of memory.

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Indeed, some memories can last a lifetime, while others easily disintegrate after a few minutes. Most are eroded by the passage of time, sometimes distorted by social influence, media narratives, even therapy. But old memories are not necessarily false ones. “I would never assume a memory is false just because it is non-contemporaneous,” says Julia Shaw, a psychological scientist at University College London who specialises in false memories, and co-founder of Spot, a workplace harassment chatbot. “While time makes it more likely that forgetting and contamination have had the possibly to occur, it is inappropriate to assume that these processes necessarily happened. A lot of time passing – even decades passing – is insufficient to indicate that a memory is wrong.”

Furthermore, rarely are strong memories akin to detailed photographic recollections of past events. They might feature vivid moments that were central to the experience, in particular ones that elicited a stronger emotional response at the time, while peripheral details such as location or date are likely to be forgotten. This is particularly true in the case of sexual assault: “A memory of a particularly traumatic part of a sexual assault is also likely to be replayed by the victim as flashbacks, further strengthening the memory at great suffering to the victim,” Shaw says. “This can be the moment a victim realises there is no escape (like having a hand put on her mouth), or the immediate aftermath, or any other piece of the event that carries emotional significance. The emotionality is subjective, but this doesn’t call into question the accuracy of the memory.”

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Leading up to the hearing, some questioned Ford’s credibility, particularly why she had not come forward at the time of the incident. Predictably, among those critics was president Donald Trump, who tweeted: “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”

To Shaw, this is one of the most pernicious misconceptions about people who are sexually assaulted: the notion that if a sexual assault had indeed been traumatic, the first thing that victims would do was report it to the police. “If they didn’t, then either a) it didn’t happen, or b) it wasn’t really so bad,” Shaw says. “These assumptions are untrue and devastating to the many who have been the victims of sexual assault. And I loathe when these devastating assumptions are veiled in the science of false memory.

“People often come forward many years after something happens. This is not itself a reason to doubt a memory. There are so many barriers to reporting assault and rape, that statistics show that most women never come forward at all – which is a travesty.”

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Shaw points out that victims are usually reticent to report sexual assault because of fear that they won’t be believed and that they will be judged disapprovingly.

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At the hearing, the Republican strategy was to attempt to poke holes in Ford’s story. “I think the narrative right now around these am accusations is to imply that because memories can be unreliable that this one must be as well,” Shaw says. “But when used in this way, talking about false memories becomes a gaslighting technique rather than a real attempt to explain. I think this stems from a persistent unwillingness to accept that most women who are sexually assaulted do not report it contemporaneously, and some of these people choose to come forward years later when they are ready.” Regardless, this proved ineffective. During the questioning, Ford remained credible throughout.

“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two.”Christine Blasey Ford

The same, perhaps, can’t be said about Kavanaugh, who testified after Ford and vehemently denied the allegations. “This seems like a normal response, both if he is innocent or if he is guilty,” Shaw says. “Men often maintain their own innocence even when evidence clearly suggests otherwise.”

From the get-go, in stark contrast with Ford’s calm demeanour, Kavanaugh was combative, often exasperated, sometimes bizarre. When asked by Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about certain mentions in his high school calendar to throwing up after drinking too much, he countered: “I like beer. I don’t know if you — do you like beer, Senator? What do you like to drink?”

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Kavanaugh’s high school drinking habits were central to the line of questioning by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ford alleges that when Kavanaugh and Judge were drunk when she was assaulted; the two other women – Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick – who have made allegations against Kavanaugh, also cite heavy drinking .

Although Kavanaugh has conceded that he would occasionally drink to excess, at the hearing he persistently filibustered when the questions implied that he had a drinking problem as a young adult. This is not corroborated by Kavanaugh’s colleagues at the time. In the book, Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk, Judge makes reference to a certain Bart O’Kavanaugh, a character with a penchant for inebriation. And even yesterday, Lynne Brookes, Kavaunaugh’s former classmate, said on CNN: "I watched the whole hearing," Brookes said. "And a number of my Yale colleagues and I were extremely disappointed in Brett Kavanaugh's characterisation of himself and the way he evaded his excessive drinking questions."

The question of whether heavy drinking can in fact lead to forgetting crucial episodes of the past is legitimate. “Mild to moderate drinking does not seem to have much of any effect on memory, but drinking heavily can quickly lead to forgetting,” Shaw says. Even Ramirez was initially hesitant because she had been drinking when the alleged attack occurred, only deciding to come forward after spending six days assessing her memories with her lawyer. “We have a tendency to undervalue witnesses and victims who were drunk at the time of a crime,” Shaw says. “This process of filling in the gaps over time is more problematic than remembering everything straight away, because it invites social discussion which can contaminate what is remembered.”

This wasn’t, of course, a criminal trial. Even after a FBI investigation — which is unlikely at this point — it would be difficult to establish beyond reasonable doubt what had happened at the house party in Bethesda, Maryland, in the summer of 1982. Even if Kavanaugh is guilty, it’s unlikely that his memory of the incident is, like Ford’s, fortified by a strong emotional response. “Perpetrators of sexual assault are almost always more detached emotionally, hence, more forgettable,” Shaw says. “They are far more likely to be enjoying themselves at the expense of their victim. This means that there is no reason to assume that the memory at the time should be encoded strongly.”

This, sadly, is not the case for the victim. At one point in the hearing, when Ford was asked what was her strongest memory of the incident, she replied: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the laugh,” she said, the voice crackling under the weight of her pain. “The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”